chaos

Ram Dass is a treasure.

I'm grateful for his presence on my path.

Be Here Now was such great advice.

I will take any subject and bend and twist it.

Now is chaos.

You can't understand the now without the past and the future.

The past paints a picture and the future shows you possibilities.

Now is energy without definition.

Chaos.

Maybe the now is the illusion?

All that exists is the past and the future which converge to make up this fleeting moment called now.

You can never put your finger on the now, instead it remains undefined.

You could say it is always now and the past and the future are memories and projections.

Time and distance create the past and future.

By the time I feel gas in my stomach that sensation is in the past.

What is that?

I live in the past.

The now is the past.

All experience is the past.

Distance gives us perspective on our past.

You're saying there is no now.

It's undefinable.

How do you explain this?

Read a book.

You have either read the words or the chapter is to come.

You're not stuck on a word.

It's known or unknown. 

There's no now only known and unknown.

As you know, there's the writer of this drama and he's from the future.

The story is what's real.

Well, it's an illusion.

A real illusion.

Now is where we are in the story.

The story is always moving.

If the story ends there's no more known and unknown. 

There's nothing.

Void.

So, what's now?

I don't know.

I think it might be something.

It's the opposite of nothing.

So, if you're in the now you're in something?

Probably.

To not be in the now is to be in nothing.

Non-duality.

No story.

If you want to find unity, then don't be in the now.

Now is separation.

Now is the story.

Now is duality.

I think I understand. 

The Goddess comes up with the ideas.

That's the known part.

The unknown is how the writer will write the story.

The story is the child.

The now is unknowable because I must transform the energy of now into something decipherable I can understand.

That process relegates my understanding of now to the past.

There is now but it's unknowable.

You can't understand it.

It's chaos.

You give it meaning and create the past.

It's best to not know.

it's all perfect

I stand before my Mesa and know it's all perfect. My overarching desire to be the eternal student is fulfilled when I listen to the Great Goddess and the Great God, all the while following the way of Ma'at. Ma'at is the ancient Egyptian expression of the natural order of things which flows. Ma'at is Tao. We perceive order as cyclical and our human minds rail against forces which impede this balanced procession. The ancient Egyptians were no different and denigrated those who would interrupt the march of eternity. The Pharaoh was responsible for upholding Ma'at - this was their chief concern. I honour what it is they believed as it was national in scope. What I mean is that they believed Egypt should always be the dominant power as part of Ma'at, and any interruptions to the flow would lead to upending the world order. In my thinking this was not true to the spirit of Ma'at. Natural order is not orderly at all, instead, within order is found a bedrock of chaos.

The chief culprit of disorder in ancient Egypt eventually was assigned to the god Set. Study of ancient Egypt reveals this was not always so as originally Set upheld Ma'at while in the sun-boat of Re. Chaos was the domain of the serpent Apophis who plotted to disrupt the voyage of the sun through the gates of the night. It was Set at the prow of the sun-boat who fended off the advances of nightfall and subsequent disorder.

Conversely, the power of Set as a separator was said to cause celestial eclipses which portend tough times ahead. Set was the god of the foreign invaders. When attempts at appeasement failed, the later dynastic rulers of Egypt along with the populace, tried to erase his memory from the monuments, not speak his name, substitute Thoth as a placeholder who ties the lands of Egypt together with Horus, and finally chased Set out of the land.

I suffer from lone wolf syndrome and what I mean is I take in knowledge, and I compare it to my own experience. I don't buy into anyone's system, chiefly matters of the divine. I respect everyone's path and choices; however, I won't be worshipping your god. I'll be curious about it and ask questions, but I've got my own treasure trove of understanding going on which has been accumulated over multiple forays into altered consciousness combined with an inordinate amount of study. With much conceit I will say that in my world I'm the number one theologian. I sit in silent arrogance.

A dependable world of order offers little fulfillment. A novel which lacks novelty is not a good read. A life which lacks challenge and adversity is boring. Drama makes the life journey compelling. Sure, we want to take a break from the rollercoaster, find peace, and plant our gardens, but eventually the siren call of adventure calls out to us. My life has been harangued by desires and wanting to fulfill these longings. The call to adventure has brought great upset into my orderly life. What I want I can get, and I don't factor in the consequences. The result of desire fulfillment moves the drama along and introduced is pain and suffering as an outcome. It's cyclical and passes, though the scars remain. Once your ship sails on through the tumult, the grace of understanding opens up to you. The Setian voice within whispers to me, "You wanted to suffer because this is the catalyst for what you really desire." If you want complete understanding of consciousness, suffering is going to be your guide. I'm not saying I'll ever figure this puzzle out 100%, but I'll go as far as I can before my game ends.

The divine wears many disguises and an understanding of this helps you when you encounter their many manifestations as part of the incredible consciousness journey. I used to get scared of the costume, now I smile. The Great God comes to me in a celebration of diversity. I alter my consciousness just a little and I connect. How will he teach me this time? I like it when he comes as Dionysos. I can connect my unapproved thoughts and feelings to God - how freeing is that? All the things you were told by society that are unwelcome as a pious and moral being in service to the divine are waved away with the wink of an eye. God gets horny? Cool. God is the alpha dragon and seeing the divine within allows you to merge with your latent divinity and you can guess at the result. Don't mess with me. Today he is Christ, teaching feminine principles of love and unity. If I can keep him externalized, he is my salvation. When you discover who you are it's a game changer, but you still play the game while others remain asleep and ignorant.

The Great Goddess shows me a love which I have never experienced and then she allows me to partake in an eroticism so charged with lust I lose my mind. As I fall for her deeply, she flips, and Medusa strikes. In ancient Egypt, her iconography is the cobra. I took my time figuring that one out. I was prepared for the poison so though it hurts and causes damage, I make it through the suffering and live to tell the tale. Pleasure and pain intertwine as she readies for the next lesson. It is in the suffering inculcated by the darkness of the feminine that I learn the most. When the poison clears, I have clarity on what caused the serpent to strike. The path of eternity teaches me these lessons she wants me to learn. The feminine is working through her own hurt and when we both find a path towards reconciliation, we will recombine into one. Is this in the cards for this story? Will there be a happy ending? I don't know. Perhaps a sequel will need to be written with an open-ended climax. Uncertainty surrounds our story, and thus the curtain will not fall on this production yet.

I'll keep writing. Life is a book that must be written as it goes, and it needs readers and actors. That's where we all come in. We all participate in the great drama of Dionysos. We read his divine poetry making this play come alive. I look forward to feasting, revelry, and much joy as we recount this tale and honour the eternal fairy tale. Pain and pleasure. Tragedy and triumph.

Thank you, Goddess and God.

beyond non-duality

The deconstruction of reality: Is it non-duality or duality? It depends on your perspective. Non-duality just is. Duality is consciousness put into motion that delineates form from the big bucket of non-dual energy. Duality is a concrete mirage; a persistent and believable one! In essence you could say the rational and analytical mind is creating the illusion through non-rational feedback of thought. Non-duality is at the centre of a device that refracts energy. One end shows the ultimate reality of a Goddess and a God that are everything and their combination enables the one that just is that we call non-dual. The other end refracts all of creation so that what is shown is the state of all this energy where we give definition to what we perceive as boundaries of the energy. The sun seems to be a replica of non-duality where there is a chaotic amalgamation of energetic potential. The energy that escapes this bastion of non-duality gIves rise to perceivable energetic life forms. Paradoxically contained within the created world are separate multiple iterations of the feminine and masculine, clueing us into the ultimate truth of the situation. We sexually re-create the non-dual by the coming together of the two. We are witness to the fundamental underpinnings of creation.

Some will say all is one and the sophisticated spiritualists among us will say no you’re wrong. By suggesting all is one you are still objectifying as one. What exists is the void, which is another way of saying non-differentiated potential. It’s a linguistic trick to add mystery to the great game. An easier way to explain it would be to refer to the non-differentiation as zero instead of one.

Feminine is the zero state of the non-differentiation of energy. We call that chaos. Masculine is the bringing to order of the chaos through differentiation of one which is objectification. The Lanzon of the pre-Columbian Andean civilization at Chavín de Huántar is an expression of divine chaos. All is together and non-differentiated. Picture the masculine jaguar running headlong along the body of the feminine serpent. The serpent’s vibration creates form and images the universe. The jaguar rushes into this lela with wild abandon.

Here’s an exercise to help you understand: Start out with a thought. What generates that thought? Duality rouses the passions of external wonder. From that initial thought comes thoughts about thoughts about thoughts. The original thought is the mother of all embedded thinking in a giant feedback loop. It would be like peeling an onion to find the core, only to find more peels. From this analogy is discovered the vibrational nature of the universe and a big vibration at the heart of it all. Our universe is string theory, vibrating without the strings or you could say that thought is the string.

Fundamentally, the vibration is the interplay between feminine and masculine. It is enabled by the the magical elixir of electro-magnetic desire that creates the pulse between the two underpinnings of all there is. Everything is the result of the attraction between mom and dad. Everything is cyclical and based upon their state of attraction. The long vibration creates and destroys the universe in an arcing pulse. When the two are sexually embraced as one we have an undifferentiated form known as chaos. At climax, we have the beginnings of the creation of the universe as the spirit of the male gives a charge of life force to the form created by the female. We are living in the coming forth of this creative endeavour which our scientists estimate is 14 billion years old. All life is derivative of this cycle that was enabled by desire and within this one long vibration are infinite number of energetic vibrations subject to this same process in order to create within creation. Every child created by the union of woman and man is a re-creation of the beginnings of our universe.

The vibration is cyclical and eternal. Ever wonder, especially as a child, what came before the universe? This question always vexed me because I would play ideas out to their conclusion. I’d read about the Big Bang but then ask the question what came before the Big Bang? Obviously, now I can see it. Prior to the Big Bang there was a different universe. I wonder what were the underpinnings of this form and what played out in this constructed world? Are there parallels between iterations of creation? I wonder if we will be able to detect clues of an ancient universe or is that left for the mystery to be discovered when I expand my consciousness beyond my mortal coil?

So, I’m curious. What is this seemingly separate electro-magnetic desire that creates the attraction between the two pillars of masculine and feminine of what just is? Mythology gives us an identity of this force. It’s Eros obviously, but it leads to the question of there being a third member of this original twosome, doesn’t it? Not necessarily, as Eros only exist because of the two. Eros comes into being because of the proximity of the two which creates the power from these two to enact the cycle of creation. Left alone, Eros is only potential to come forth as the two near each other. It is Eros that brings the two together and from this idea you can intellectually project that the universe as a child of the original Goddess and God is the coming forth of Eros. All children born into our world are manifestations of desire come forth as a replica of mom and dad and taking on a dominate gender of form in order to create as well. Erosverse!

seeing the face of god

Living in a civilized society will eventually make you prone to the cyclical outbreak of madness that is triggered by an unrelated event. In the second decade of the 21st Century, a respiratory pathogen is the impetus for the mass psychosis presently infecting those who do not think for themselves. The cues for groupthink are passed on down from the arbiters of the mind parasite and the puppets dutifully follow along and repeat their marching orders. When you point out the cognitive dissonance of what they are saying, the result is a blank stare followed by an attempt to spin the facts as presented.

My greatest teachers have been found in the darkness of self. My teachers have many faces; each iteration manifesting as part of the lesson plan that lays ahead. The way I look at it is I now see the face of God in my teacher regardless of the disguise he has currently chosen to impart the knowledge. The face is the clue that will help me understand the lesson. Dare I say the darkness is a fantastical beast with many heads.

If I see the face of God in the archetypical dragon, I know he is teaching me destruction. The destroyer has a bad rap; with some merit to the assertion. I mean if you spend a lifetime building something up you may want to preserve what it is you built. Take for instance my identity which is a half-century construction project. The foundation for my ego is the shifting sands of culture and upon that flimsy base I built for myself an avatar that can successfully navigate the vagaries of culture and be moderately successful at it. Even though a voice within is telling me different, I can fit into society and get my piece of the pie. I get a warm place to sleep at night and I can fill my belly. I’m a domesticated dog with a few other privileges thrown in to keep me tame. God as the dragon reveals to me the stark truth, teaches me how to destroy my domestication, and break free from the chains of culture. He is relentless because the life of a sheep for such an awesome power as myself is no life at all.

When we live in society, we suppress a great deal of urges and passions. Failure to suppress our innate self will get you thrown out of polite society and possibly locked up in a cage. So, instead we create a virtual cage for ourselves. Psychological maladies are hard to self-diagnose and thus imagine a situation where in a culture everyone is subject to the same pathology and therefore can’t see it in others. Instead, they see confirmation that everything is as it should be and mind doctors in our culture perpetuate the madness by designating the problem being the disease of the mind that really is a result of the sickness. Anxiety and depression are the physical manifestation of a lifetime of consuming large doses of cultural sugar. The sickness is culture; however, that is not addressed. Our pills treat the symptomatic disease and numb us to the reason we feel the way we do.

We moderns are not unique. Culture has always been subject to the cyclical return of madness. The ancients Greeks had this god they called Dionysos. He’s the mad god that cyclically returns from a faraway land and wreaks havoc upon their tight civilization. Dionysos is associated with liberation and madness. I see the face of God in him so much I laugh. I laugh because I look at my society and see he’s here! Culture is splintering into absurdities. Conservative factors decry the destruction of what once was, while the more permissive within culture accelerate the decline. Dionysos encourages the use of mind-altering substances to remove the filters and see culture for what it truly is. Dionysos is the original gender-bender. The idea of identity is taken to its pathological extremes. Pretty funny, right? You can see now that I pointed it out! Have a good laugh and watch it burn.

The chaos that Dionysos brings into society will have its opposite extreme. The authoritarians among us will make their play for more power. We must understand we hold the power in our hands. We could retreat to the safety of being a sheep because the wolf of freedom stares us down. We can give up the best of what we offer to our master until he has no use for us anymore and sacrifices us. Such is the life of a sheep. The problem is you think you are a sheep are thus the wolf is waiting to devour you. You are not a sheep. Dig deep and you will see it. You will see the face of God within, and that face is a jaguar. The wolf will retreat in deference when you re-awaken to your power. The kingdom is yours to reclaim.

access to power

You can create an axis mundi, which is an access to power, anywhere on the earth. It’s the genius of the spherical shaped planet we call home. The potential to become power is always present but unless you discover and figure it out, you’ll go to your grave oblivious to its secret. At Chavín de Huántar, the axis mundi was designated at a spot where two rivers meet in a valley plain. The stone idol worshipped at Chavín, we call the lanzon, is an amalgamation of all the forces in the universe into the one.

The artistry is peculiar and unique to not only the era but also the modern human. Form is present though all is encapsulated within the one image. It is an ingenious way of depicting chaos; chaos being non-differentiated unity and this structure represented crystallized power at Chavín. The unleashing of the power was the coming forth of the god as a jaguar. Placed in an underground labyrinth, the god's height allowed them to inhabit a representation of the three shamanic worlds of lower, middle, and upper regions. In addition, the lanzon's placement was such that on the solstices the rising and setting sun would enlighten the large lance-like monolith. It is truly the temple of the jaguar and ceremony was performed where the adherent would transform into the jaguar as the power was unleashed within. Chavín de Huántar was at the time one of the most powerful places upon earth.

The axis mundi is the mythological tree of life. Eternal life is the secret it holds; however, be aware the chalice of immortality is guarded by the dragon. To access power is to slay the dragon. The path will take you inwards to the ultimate conundrum which is that you are the dragon. The Goddess gave me the strength and courage to pick up my sword and continue on in this journey where I would slay the dragon. That’s what she told me but she knew all along the process of discovery would lead to discovery of the identity of the dragon and a subsequent liberation of both her and the adversary I entered into battle with. The access to power is the stuff of what could be termed magical. It’s not instantaneous and takes time, patience, discipline, and understanding. Who would have thought magic involved the disciplinary arts? Isn’t it all instantaneous hocus pocus? You set up your axis mundi, slowly build upon it, get to know all the pieces on the game board, and come to understand the interplay of the opposites and the roles they play in this great drama. You let go of preconceived notions, prejudices, and cultural blocks. The blocks to clear are the cautions to stay away from the occult and the dark forces of magic. From this point you need a catalyst. The catalyst is something that will activate the power within. For me, it is Mapacho Tobacco. The great teacher unlocks the power within my form. Subsequently, at my Mesa I perform ceremony and ritual which potentiates the energy at this most holy power centre. The power envelops and rises within my form. The load on my body is electrifying. I am but a novice so I haven’t fully learned to channel the energy as of yet. Honestly, I’m amazed at how I have freed the power within my Mesa which is based upon what the great maestro don Howard, Otorongo Blanco of the Upper Amazon taught me. It’s been a multi-year project where I did not seek out power but was instead faithful to respect and ritual at my Mesa. 

The gift of conscious awareness comes from the Goddess and her birthing of forms. She then takes away awareness through death and dissolution. The hidden path is the journey of discovery and subsequent combining of your consciousness to your energetic signature. It is the forging of steel through the union of awareness and energy in the fires of this hell tempered by the love of the Goddess. My eternal vibration will become inexorably aware. Eternal life for conscious awareness is what I'm up to. My shadow I discovered is this divine masculine energy. He is God. He is power. He is only a shadow because I denied and buried him deep. Recovering the knowledge of his presence and guiding hand is healing. My super power is consciousness. The divine masculine offers indestructible life. This is the essence of my destiny and my path going forth for the rest of my life. I accessed the fount of power but somehow knew enough what to do with it thanks to the lessons from the feminine divine.

So, I was standing at my Mesa last night lit up with power — both the Mesa and myself. I thought back to the origins of this journey I am on. The path I’m walking was an invitation presented to me by the Great Goddess whom I discovered in Egypt. She invited me to find her. I found her in the Amazon jungle. Once found, she implored me to free her. Take up your sword and slay the dragon! Here I am. I went after him and he beat me into a pulp. I retreated, regrouped, and came back. I didn’t chase his power even though there was lots of it offered to me. I kept true to my word and went after him as I promised the Goddess. Eventually, my noble intention was honoured. The dragon let me into his inner circle. I wasn’t after power. I sought liberation and knowledge. I had the antidote to the chains of both Goddess and God. Through discovering it was I who was the dragon, I freed the Goddess and myself.

As the rising power rippled through my being last night I thought of don Howard; primarily, his example and subtle words. He would sit a group of us down and talk about power. Having access to it and being tempted and seduced by its call; like he knew something about this journey we were about to undertake. He never showed his cards. I think he relied on the medicine to reveal what he hinted at and was preparing us for the choice. As part of the lesson he would talk about ayni. Everything is this world is connected and thus reciprocal. You take and you give back. It’s the scales of reciprocity. When you apply this lesson to power you clearly see why power corrupts. The siren song of taking the power offered will get you. Every time. When you take power as offered you are in debt and then come the interest payments and requirement to offer something back in return. We were instructed to set intentions and thus make grandiose promises but soon we are monetizing our newfound access to power and figuring out how we are going to take advantage of our boon.

To be liberated is to live in obscurity. Don Howard kept a low profile and he was the greatest man I ever met. Seriously, that man sat on a goldmine and had knowledge and know how that dwarfed all others yet he was in service to the greater good. He made a promise to raise consciousness for the good of all and did not waver from that promise. His legacy lives on in the spirit of those whom he touched and got the message. I’ve been fortunate enough to surround myself with some of those people. I looked back last night on the journey and realized I could not have done it without him. My Mesa I stand in front of in service is a direct result of don Howard. He showed me the set up; explained the principles; and sent me home with my interest piqued. I gradually assembled my Mesa and in this last year placed the Lanzon in the centre and thus discovered the secret of its power. My Mesa is lit.

numbering

The re-thinking of numbers: I propose a new structure based upon the dichotomy of non-duality and duality. Numbers are avatars of dualism. Even the number 1 implies the presence of the dual. Sages of yesteryear struggled with this question and came up with the concept of non-duality that denied the inherent dualism in any concept that promulgated the one. They said just drop the idea of one and think of non-duality as void and non-divisible.

There is frustration in expressing non-dualism in a dualistic paradigm. It’s quite the puzzle.

Personally, I think the spiritual masters of the pre-Columbian civilization of Chavín de Huantar got it right. This civilization flourished in the 1st century BCE. The stone idol at the location of the axis mundi in the valley plain is such an attempt at depicting the inherent non-divisible component of the universe. Creation is an unbroken thread that if followed reveals we are all of the same source, all the way back to the big bang; never was that connection broken and never did we become separate and the many. We just think we are.

The smiling jaguar at Chavín was given the moniker “el Lanzón" by Spanish archaeologists who re-discovered the stone idol. The name in Spanish means a lance though the shape resembles a highland plough more than it does a spear. What is important about the location of the idol is it is in the centre of what was considered the centre of the Chavín civilization. All who would pass through the region would be directed to come through the axis mundi at Chavín, thus exposing all surrounding cultures to its community and ideals.

If you look at what these Andean shamanic masters created it will confound and confuse you. You will see forms within the artistry but they are not delineated, as our minds prefer. Instead, form is hinted at through contour rivalry, which is an artistic technique used to create more than one possible interpretation of an image. Your perspective determines what form you decide emerges from the art. To go even a step further, the perspective that affects your rendition of the god is both physical and mental. This is magic and beautiful chaos. Transformation depicted within stone. Incredible! The art form of Chavín is a high achievement of humankind, so much so it remains hidden to most until you live the life the sacrament of the culture prescribes to you. What was the sacrament? The sacrament was the plant medicine cactus Huachuma and in the set and setting of the confluence of energetic elements at the temple grounds it opens the heart and allows you to experience the cosmic love of the universe and within your heart the unity of all. The stone idol subsequently reveals its secret to the initiate. You see symmetry within the stone idol and notice the left-hand points downwards to the feminine terrestrial and the right-hand upwards to the masculine celestial thus revealing an association with duality coming forth from the perfect balance achieved at Chavín. You see the stone idol representing all. The god is masculine and feminine. Eventually, you may let go of the self and see yourself in the labyrinth at Chavín. A pilgrimage many years in the making, the sacredness of what was created long lost however it was not lost on this lonely wayfarer.

So, getting back to the number system, I propose an order of 0,2,1 in order to try and represent and reflect the paradigm of non-dualism within a dualistic construct. 0 is the non-divisible void. Have you ever tried to divide by zero? You get an error and your computer code stops. The first step into duality involves the binary as represented by the number two. It’s what makes our universe perceptually come alive. Subject and object. Without two, our senses are useless, therefore 2 comes after 0. From the two comes the 1. Mom and Dad, the two, create one. In duality, one is also three - Mom, Dad, and me, and makes the many because to get one you need two. So, to recap, we could now number our construct thus:

0,2,1/3

One and three being essentially the same.

I write this blog post as a warning to stay away from plant medicines which many enforcers of culture will flat out call drugs. Psychedelic drugs are bad. They will destroy your mind. I am exhibit ‘A’. 

liber pater

I could proffer you some advice if you are to go off in search of meaning, answers, enlightenment, a spiritual journey, or whatever you wish to call it; the guidance would be straightforward: your first stop along the path is liberation. Free yourself from culture and expectations; plus the old story and baggage you haul around. Like countless others, I didn’t do that and subsequently had to re-trace my steps and work to become free. I made my climb long and difficult due to a constant struggle with letting go of expectations, image, and self. All these chains and traits are the product of human social constructs that bind you to their mental prison.

 

From a wider perspective, you can see the chaos and breakdown happening within society, can’t you? As humans, we long to be free but don’t know how to go about getting liberated. In the mythic Greek literature, Dionysos is an outsider and he arrives from a foreign land. He’s an enemy of order and is embraced by the malcontents and those in opposition to structured society. He is scorned, derided, and chased away. Dionysos’ arrival on the scene gives you permission to be free. Everything becomes fluid. Where does hermaphroditism, gender identity issues, and the questioning of the social fabric we hold dear come from? Everyone is puzzled. Ask the Greeks - they intimately knew a god named Dionysos the libertine who would always pay a visit, especially when order became oppressive. Do you fight it or just observe? Are you concerned or smiling?

 

Dionysos is always coming to destroy order, whether that be society or your nice and tight life you have crafted. We men build and champion order and like a good Jenga game, the structure eventually gets knocked down. It’s the natural flow of the universal vibration common to all and we get pulled along. Culturally and individually, we face the dissolution of all we try so hard to maintain. It’s constant and really hard work protecting and ordering order. Seriously, you have to work at it or literally go to work, earn money, and use that money to keep your life together. Doing nothing leads to collapse. Funny how that works. I sat with that truth and finally realized I’m motivated to go to work because I’m addicted to order. I know I am because when I overdose on conformity and order, Dionysos always returns and questions me. I subsequently follow him on some kind of adventure to escape this hell I create for myself, all emanating from a proclivity towards order. Hell is spawned because of my pathological need to maintain order.

 

My life has been a struggle between these two polarities. I am constantly frustrated that I can’t maintain my facade and always drift back into some sort of hedonism or chasing of a thrill. I define it as a problem, unable to accept the flow. I’m pulled towards the liberation which I seek, yet I fight it and try to maintain order. I walked past a homeless person the other day and the voice inside me whispered, "he is free." I could not deny it. Think about that for a second. Freedom isn’t glamorous. As a society, we offer the dispossessed shelter and food which they accept but they don’t fall into the societal trap of having to earn a living and eventually go back out into the streets. Why don’t they want to play our game of social conformity? We can clean them up and get them a menial job. It’s mental illness we reassure ourselves, as we take great pains to not look into our own mirror of self because we might question our own sanity for the game we are playing. So, we try even harder to offer social services to invite the homeless back into our game. The plight of the homeless, unbeknownst to them, validates our life choices. We need them more than they need our handouts.

 

Ultimately, liberation involves dissolving all boundaries, letting go of attachments, and returning to the chaos always knocking at our door. You can taste liberation in this lifetime; I have and it’s sweet. I’m talking about being on a boat on the Amazon river forgetting about the worries of life and just being so goddamn high and in love. Being free allows you to finally exhale. I’ve learned it’s only the appetizer. To go all the way to Liber Pater involves dissolving the idea of who you are. Carlos Castaneda said erase personal history. Basically, kill your identity in order to be free. This expression brought me back to said boat ride in February in the grasp of Huachuma when Dionysos appeared in the clouds and he kept telling me this very same idea. Fuck me and my failure sometimes to listen to the plants.

 

On the boats heading off to the main Amazon river to visit the Murui Huitoto tribe I was so into the medicine and as high as the clouds. I was flooded with two sayings that summed up my bliss of forgetting who I was and how I was expected to act:

 

“Kill yourself in order to live.”

“The pious can go to hell.”

 

My intention revolved around learning now to stay in that high and loving state all the time. I sure got that answer and more all laid out for me. When I drank in the beauty of nature, of friendship, of the awareness of the wonderful world around me I was drunk in that state of bliss. When I engaged the mind at all it was clear that was the hell world. My thoughts went dark, I came down, I worried about the future, I wondered if I had the strength to complete this journey and so on. It was very unsettling. It was clear that it was a choice whether to live in hell or heaven and not even all that difficult a choice. Hey you! Give your mind a rest. The old “Be Here Now” choice; just live in awareness without spinning any thoughts or ideas.

 

I put this revelation off for a bit and here we are eight months later with the integration process challenging me and asking for a reconciliation with freedom and mastery. Castaneda writes about making yourself unavailable while erasing personal history. The reason for this line of thinking is primarily liberation. Having a history, means expectations of behaviour, and living a lie. Acquaintances and culture can manipulate you like a puppet because you don’t want to deviate from the identity you have created. If you have left nothing for these constructs to grasp onto then you can act independently. That’s one way through however for most of us our personal history is our life we have created. Sure at times we feel trapped but I would hazard to guess most of us don’t want to blow up our whole backstory and be left holding a big bag of nothing. That seems pretty extreme. It brings to mind the role of the Bodhisattva, a holy man who has seen through the game but re-enters into the game in order to help others see through it. It’s a noble call of service.

 

After seven years of plant medicine use, the information provided doesn’t upset me anymore. By this assertion I mean that when I first drank and met these archetypal spirits I was frightened and in awe of their presence as well as my newfound ability to lift the veil and peek into this obfuscated world. Now, I am able to listen and study the wisdom being offered. “Kill yourself in order to live.” Yeah it’s metaphor, don’t worry, I know that. My teacher has a twisted sense of humour. When I first drank plant medicines and he scared the shit out of me, he told me if I kept drinking the medicine and stayed on the path eventually I’d walk into the direction of an oncoming train and kill myself. I remember vividly that conversation with my shadow because he told me to stop drinking plant medicines, go home, and don’t ever come back. Live out your life, grow old, and don’t question existence. I left the jungle and he followed me home and harangued me; trying to put the final nail in the coffin so that I wouldn’t continue on this path. I did come back and I know my shadow now has a great deal of respect for me. I’m pretty sure he figured I was a weakling. Ha! I sure fooled him.

 

Seven years later, I can finally see what he originally meant by walking in front of a train and killing myself. It was metaphor as well, however at the time it was used to make me question this path I had embarked upon. I had to understand why I wanted to continue. I now sense he doesn’t readily accept students, as suggested by the fear induced and threats of death hurled my way. The adventure and chance at knowledge was too great to keep me away. Now here I am, standing on the train tracks. I understand what he was telling me. If you want to be free, you got to let the story go.

 

I see similar paths of earned respect with human teachers. For instance, my flesh and body teacher, don Howard, was very accepting to anyone who was sincere about walking this path. And I think he was genuinely surprised and happy when someone returned for another go around in the wringer of plant medicines. It’s very difficult and takes commitment but I remember just showing up again and I could feel the respect growing. There’s something divine about just showing up and facing the head wind of adversity, not knowing the outcome. Don Howard knew what it takes, what you are going to face, and have to choose. He let you progress at your own pace and had your back. I love that man.

 

How do I get liberated? It’s through mastering the self. That means all the attachments, desires, and pull of culture that call out to you are mastered. You become the King of Selfdom. You cannot ever defeat these challengers, that’s a tough one to learn, however you can rule them. After the continual frustration, you will learn this secret and that puts you on the path towards liberation. The only way to do this is to investigate the darkness within. Chasing the high will will never allow for a reconciliation with all.

 

There is a difference between liberation and enlightenment. Beginners in the world of spiritual seeking hear much of liberation and enlightenment. Spiritual enlightenment without liberation is still beholden to cultural expectations of religious experience. You know what I mean, don’t you? It all begins with being free. It’s the foundation upon which everything must rest. In order to love unconditionally, you have to begin from the tract of being free. Free of conditions. To become free you give up judgment. You give up conceptions of right and wrong. You give up morality. Free means free. Sounds crazy, right? Murder is immoral. Being free naturally extends to wanting others to be free. Being free would mean not imposing upon others. Murder is an act of imposing your will upon someone as a last resort because you couldn’t control them. Frustration on this spiritual path I have chosen could have been avoided if I would have went into the darkness of self to begin with and reconciled that part of me. The high would have been tempered with the low and I could have seen where I was at.

 

I have to admit though I wouldn’t change this journey for the world. Everything that has happened has been perfect. It has all contributed to my growth. Through these trials and frustrations, I have been pressured and forced to find answers. The natural inclination is to wave a spiritual wand and reach the highest highs without having to work for it. You know, take a pill or drink a cup of brew and find that elusive enlightenment. My difficult journey, on the other left hand, has been perfect.

divine lineage

The divine feminine and masculine come together in the centre of the grand Mesa at the axis mundi here in the symbolic expressed by the lanzon from Chavín de Huantar.

Brought together are the left and right hand paths of the feminine and masculine along with the lower and upper worlds of these energies. All is absorbed back into the representative of the Chavín god. Everything is reconciled into the centre. It is also expressed as the serpent and the jaguar. The serpent as the feminine creates the form and the jaguar as the masculine is the life force that roams this form. They are the two eternal energies that make up the sum total of all. The multi-dimensional reflection of the non-differentiated form is from these two. You can’t see one without two and centring yourself allows you to see one, two, and the many. The many collapses into the one just as the two through sexual union becomes an expression of the one.

Standing with this knowledge at the Mesa will eventually lead to understanding. We are conditioned to believe chaos is bad and can be demonstrated in expressions of madness and unpredictability. I think that’s true. Psychologically, we relegate the feminine to chaos and the striving of the masculine energy to order and reason. The great intellect of Jordan Peterson even wrote a book on this paradigm called “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos” and in turn riled up the feminist class amongst us. Well, he is a master of controversy and is in turn misunderstood as we looked towards our developed prejudices and fail to look into the heart of the matter. I also wondered what were his intentions in writing this book? Getting to know his persona through the internet, I certainly didn’t detect misogyny, instead a refreshing honesty.

Feminine energy is chaos. Masculine energy tends towards order. Just ask Apollo, the Greek god of light and reason. Within the sum of ourselves are the interplay of these two gendered energies, so it is not mutually exclusive to either sex of the species. Knowledge is a great tool but understanding is divine. Taking the sum total of all I know and feeding it into my central processor, the brain, allows me to synergize the whole set up. Late at night, I stand there in front of my Mesa performing ritualistic acts that allow me to re-centre myself. Sometimes the epiphanies come. Epiphanies are the computer spitting out the punch card with the results. I see the sum of all energy at the axis mundi and then scattered throughout my Mesa and refracted through the prism of my mind are expressions of this energy. The one and the many. It is indeed I who brings this Mesa to life! I take unity and objectify that energy thus creating the world. I use my masculine powers to separate and behold reality!

Now back to centre. This form in the centre is non-differentiated. Aha! That is chaos and I intuitively knew it to be so. The non-differentiated energy has no order and no separation. We assign that condition to being a bad thing but it is in fact the reflection of order. What is the correct state or reality of energy? Is it the feminine unity or masculine separation? Many esoteric and Eastern traditions will tell you that because we are the ones that objectify, it is actually the spiritual truth that we are all one. Is that the truth? Is it the truth because from our perspective of dominate masculine energy in the culture we erroneously think the opposite spiritual state is true? If you want to stop the world it is true. However, the interesting part of the equation is that we live in a verb. Consciousness and existence as we know it is a wave vibration. Existence is defined by motion, which creates the illusion of time and separation. So, stop the motion and we have the truth. If we stop the motion then we have nothing. Just potential, which is the other side of coming forth. Is that really true? Why do you think the static trumps motion and motion creates illusory outcomes? Why do you think feminine chaos contains more truth than masculine objectification? Is it unsettling to have your prejudices laid bare? Yes it is because my spurious foundations are revealed once again. My understanding lies on a foundation of shifting sands. What if you can’t have one without the other? The dependency of the two creates the whole. The truth is if you see the two energies not in a sexual union then you see multiplicity. If your universal view is a sexual metaphor then we are indeed all one. Maybe Einstein was on to something with the whole relativity claim? It makes claims of truth and fanciful chasing of said truth very funny, if not frustrating.

Looking back into history, we see many budding civilizations grappled with this origin question and the dominance of each energy pole. At first, it was the feminine asserting her power which allowed creation to flourish however we are now living in the order of the masculine. Looking into my crystal ball reveals the logical outcome is pathological order which becomes tyranny. The system then collapses. Gazing back into the past, in the Mesopotamian basin the triumph of the masculine energy was mythicized as Marduk defeating the water serpent Tiamat, who personified the feminine chaos. In order for civilization to take hold, she had to be defeated. In the opening chapter of Genesis in the Bible, we see hints of this very thing as Yahweh takes the chaos and adds some light into the mix in order to separate things. Here are the passages from the King James Version.

1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

In the beginning nothing was differentiated until the masculine energy came along and started dividing things up. The Old Testament is also a great primer on the actions of masculine energy not tempered by the presence of balancing feminine energy. Fire and brimstone indeed and Jewish mythicists got that one spot on! In Greek mythology, Apollo comes along and kills Python, the enemy dragoness. This act occurred at Delphi which was considered the centre of the world. With the triumph over the feminine serpent, the Greek god of reason enabled a new consciousness in humans that celebrated the rise of individual differences. Apollo was victorious however reason still called upon the oracle at Delphi in the form of the prophetess called the Pythia. She had the gift of vision - something the mind clouded by logic and reason had to discard in order to rule. In addition, in ancient Egypt we have the god Re and his association with the cycles of time created by the sun, continuing along daily in a sun boat that is forever threatened by the chaos serpent Apophis. This battle is enacted daily and motion is eternally perpetuated by victory over chaos with the help of the strong masculine energy personified in the god Set.

Back to my Mesa. Look at how I intuitively set it up, though I didn’t know what I was doing.

The axis mundi is in the centre and the table is full of differentiated expressions of this energetic centre. However, overlooking this whole construct is this image of a jaguar within the form created by a serpent. Somehow, I knew the archetypal two lay at the head of what just is and I left it in place to discover at a later date in my journey to nowhere. The two become one and the one becomes the many. This is the divine lineage from which we all come. 

machinations of mind

Reason is founded upon non-reason, chaos if you will. The natural state is meaningless; it just is. Assigning it context, ordering it, and making logical sense and reason out of existence is the result of thinking. So, you see, reason is measurement and therefore illusory. Non-reason is the fount of everything.

As an exercise the next time you are out in nature or go for a walk in the woods, have a unencumbered look at your surroundings. In nature you will notice there’s no order to the plethora of old and new growth in the forest. Nature is resembling chaos for the most part. The river that runs through the path I walk is winding and twisting and turning on its way to a destination unknown. We humans love to organize and plant gardens. We plant them in nice rows. We bring order and reason to the natural state of chaos.

nature

My masculine "higher self" can be said to be ultimately in charge of this vehicle I call self. He is the one who has the knowledge, experience, and expertise needed to drive this vehicle perfectly on the road of life. He gave the keys to me at physical birth. He takes care of most things needed to operate this vehicle but he gives me free will to drive it wherever I wish to take it. He has managed to be hands off and just lets me sometimes drive it out of control or make questionable decisions that cause negligent damage to the vehicle. It’s a joy ride on my journey of discovery.

How awesome is it that he made me the mouthpiece of this field of energy? He entrusted me to be the spokesperson. I can wax eloquently on about this and that all the while hiding a ulterior motive in my quest to get get get. In retrospect, what a blunder! It's like giving the fox the keys to the henhouse. I mean I'm full of desires, wants, and questionable eating habits. I want power and control over my vicarious situation and I'm given the means to become an utter failure and miscreant by using this power for selfish gains. I think that's the brilliance behind it though. Through this power and responsibility I will fail and bring the edifice into disrepute. I will reenact the biblical story of the prodigal son (It's a great story, go read it - I'll wait). 

Switching gears now, when I go to sleep at night mental activity seems to cease because I can’t recall anything for a certain portion of the night. However. at some point into the rest period eventually comes the dreaming. Think of this in terms of the eternal wave of energy that is at rest and then peaks and is everything in between. So, you have peaceful sleep and then mental activity, in which a form of dreaming consciousness then starts to take place. You can mimic this with meditation where you can silence the mentation and turnings of the mind and reach peace. This state of mind is fleeting and then the thoughts start coming back. I’m sure you can now see the parallels. So, why I bring this up is the curious case of our lives being a form of a dream and existence being a form of consciousness as opposed to concrete stuff. When we sleep and dream at night we are dreaming within our dream, because that is the energy cresting and falling. Cycling is what energy does and it is recursive in this case. We only recognize the actual dream when we come out of sleep. While dreaming we don’t recognize that we are dreaming for the most part and those that do can eventually direct the course of the dream. Taking this as a template for what we call life, or reality, it is interesting if we view our lives as a dream or the mental activity of something "higher", whatever that may be. I do like to identify with something higher; definitely not the low! The "higher self" is dreaming and controls an avatar that functions in this world. The world is the mental construct of a collective consciousness in which everyone participates because we are all part of the energy which enables consciousness. Much like in a dream if you do realize this then you can perhaps start having some control over events in this waking dream. We used to call this magic. From this thinking, you can postulate that not having control over your avatar might be the better play. We call this free will. Free will and magic at opposite ends of control.

Taking this a step further, when I dream at night I am creating a universe, though my "lower self" and its dreaming capacity is pretty primitive, so this universe is loosely modelled on the "higher self" dream. Subsequently, this universe is fleeting and not all that well thought out being as it is coming from a rookie dreamer. However, the cool thing about my dream is that everything which is separate and plays out is ultimately the product of my mind as a unity. So, take that realization and project it on to your own life, your origin, and realize the essential oneness of all.

At night I dream and I create worlds full of people, places, and things from the mundane to the spectacular. The commonality between all I have created in my dreams is that they were given the energy to exist through my mental processes. They are of a common origin. They are essentially one; the unity we seek in our own spiritual lives. Are we the product of a dreamer? And is the dreamer a product of another dreamer? Is this recursive?